AI load wants to plug in faster than the grid can write the rules. PJM and CAISO just put their answers on paper. Quick catch-up before we dig in: PJM’s large-load fight has already cleared several gates. There’s an expedited large-load track, a reformed interconnection queue that accepted 715 projects totaling 201.5 GW, and mandatory ride-through requirements for data centers after PJM events. The fight now is connecting AI-scale load fast enough without weakening resource adequacy or dumping scarcity costs on ordinary customers. This is The Data Center Daily. Two grid operators filed their answers yesterday—and now we get to see whether the rules have teeth when a giant load is told to cut. This story isn't over: PJM large-load integration plan. Follow us wherever you're listening, and the next chapter comes to you. Here's Inside Lines:
PJM’s proposal also would establish a new Interim Resource Adequacy Service (IRAS) for those new Large Load customers who do not bring their own power supply. When electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels, a new emergency procedure would notify utilities to reduce or transfer the electricity demand from new Large Load customers ahead of any action that would serve to shut off traditional consumers, including residential consumers.
PJM is finally putting the emergency order in writing: new large loads without their own capacity get cut before homes do. Data centers account for 30 of PJM’s projected 32 gigawatts of load growth through 2030, so that curtailment queue is going to matter. PJM has moved from queue reform and ride-through rules to a filed framework for capacity-backed data center connections. IRAS kicks in when a customer hasn’t brought new capacity or isn’t covered by the Reliability Backstop Procurement, which starts addressing shortfalls in June 2027. And PJM’s Large Load Registry had better be more than a spreadsheet with a stern font. States and utilities need to know who can be curtailed, how much demand moves, and whether the campus actually responds when the notice lands. PJM is leaving retail cost allocation to the states, which is legally tidy and financially combustible. The filing gives the operator an emergency tool, but the bill for building around all this new load is still very much a state-level fight. Here’s what David Krause at RTO Insider is reporting. CAISO got a FERC show-cause order two months ago, and now it’s proposing a large-load interconnection rewrite. Good. A show-cause is the regulator asking why your rules aren’t ready for the thing already at the door. Aug. 13 puts two major grid operators on the board with filed large-load rules. PJM and CAISO got there for different reasons, but neither can keep running interconnection policy on a conventional load-forecast timeline. The proposal only matters if it sets consequences before the megawatts get promised away. “Large load” is not a magic phrase that manufactures transmission, generation, or a working substation. RTO Insider has it right: CAISO is responding to a FERC order, not unveiling a lifestyle brand. We’ll watch the tariff language for the actual gates—study treatment, timing, and the conditions for getting connected. EnergyReader writes:
Evergy's 3 GW of data center deals, combined with AEP's turbine bookings and NRG's Texas gas plant, signals sustained US gas-fired generation demand into the 2030s. Evergy has executed electric service agreements covering 2.5 gigawatts of data center load under its large-load power service tariff, with a further 500 megawatts of smaller customer agreements falling outside that tariff, utility executives said Friday (2026-08-07) on the company's second-quarter earnings call.
Evergy’s headline is 3 gigawatts, but the split matters: 2.5 GW is in executed large-load electric service agreements, while 500 MW is in smaller agreements outside that tariff. Management confirmed that on the August 7 earnings call—not in a glossy campus rendering. And the generation answer is gas turbines through the 2030s. So spare me the frictionless ‘clean AI’ slogan when the utility is lining up firm combustion capacity to keep server racks fed at 3 a.m. AEP has secured about 13 GW of turbine capacity that can be deployed by 2031, after adding 3 GW in the second quarter. NRG, meanwhile, says it has principal commercial terms for a 1.2-GW Texas combined-cycle plant with an unnamed hyperscaler. Turbine slots are becoming an interconnection variable. And Evergy serves Kansas and Missouri. Three gigawatts of incremental load is enormous for that footprint. The PJM rules we just covered can tell loads when to curtail; they don’t decide who pays when the turbines, wires, and substations show up. Here's Tristan Rich at Markets Daily:
Equinix has been preparing for a higher development throughput for several years, Abdel said. The company has publicly announced more than 52 projects underway across 33 global markets, while another roughly 50 projects are in planning or development stages, including efforts to secure land, power and necessary supply-chain capacity.
Equinix has 52 projects underway in 33 markets, plus roughly 50 more in planning or development—and it’s already laying out deliveries for 2028 and 2029. After those PJM and CAISO filings, this is the kind of long-cycle planning they’re trying to accommodate: land, power, and equipment reservations years before a hall opens. Abdel says the land bank is multi-gigawatt, but he also says that 3-gigawatt estimate may be overstated. Good. Keep the asterisk attached. A land bank still needs power, and a planning-stage project still needs a customer with power at the meter. Their standard template is about 60 megawatts, so roughly 50 projects is a meaningful pipeline. But it still hinges on power, labor, supply-chain capacity, and community acceptance. The old site-selection spreadsheet has acquired several new columns. And the projects coming online this year were put on track two or three years ago. When somebody promises a giant campus on a fresh parcel, ask what came first: the land, the turbines, the transmission slot—or just the announcement. Canary Media, with Jeff St. John:
Late last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered PJM Interconnection to accept statistical sampling as a valid method for measuring the reliability of programs tapping into demand-response and virtual-power-plant programs, which pay customers to turn down energy use as needed. The decision requires the grid operator to reconsider strict data rules that had prevented providers of this carbon-free resource from participating in PJM’s constrained energy-capacity market.
FERC told PJM statistical sampling counts. Good. You can’t lock out demand response because you demanded household-by-household telemetry fit for a tax audit. And the timing is almost comically precise: PJM filed a curtailment framework for big new loads while FERC reopened a path for at least 4.9 gigawatts of blocked VPP and demand-response capacity. PJM gets a brake on new load, and more flexibility may get back into the market. PJM needs to stop treating flexible demand like a novelty while asking data centers to curtail in an emergency. Voltus got the ruling; now make the capacity market usable before somebody orders another gas turbine as the only answer. FERC’s point is simple: a measurement rule can’t become a gate that excludes a resource PJM says it needs. Have feedback, a story idea, or a correction? Email us at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com. Your notes help make The Data Center Daily better, and we’d love to hear from you.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so check out the ones that caught your attention and read further when you have a moment. Thanks for listening, and have a good weekend. That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.